The university teachers’ digital competence during the transition to emergency remote teaching

Abstract

The forced migration of face-to-face universities to a distance education model due to COVID-19 has highlighted the shortcomings of teachers’ digital competence. Using a descriptive and inferential cross-sectional design, this study analyzes the digital competence level with which teachers transitioned to emergency remote teaching during confinement and explores digital training’s impact on the proficiency of such competence and identifies the digital teacher profiles. For this purpose, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 220 teachers from a Spanish public university. The main findings reveal an intermediate level of digital competence with fluctuations among the competency areas. It was found that previous digital training seems to have been a necessary but not sufficient condition for optimal migration. Finally, five digital profiles are detected: objectors, laggards, confident, learners and avant-gardists. It concludes with the need to establish training plans based on a digital competency diagnosis, the implementation of technological tools in teaching, and the use of innovative pedagogical and methodological approaches. It is recommended to further expand the research by incorporating other variables to validate these preliminary findings.